On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 09:18:25 -0500, Bill Truesdell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
>If you want a exorbitant price for your local honey, marketing is the
>all in all. Not quality, not purity, not taste. 

really? consumers can detect no differences between a raw varietal honey and Souix Bee? so most 
honey is the same just sweet eh? 

Bill for all of your interesting and insightful posts that comment is absurb                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
...I wonder if you even believe it. Come on....

The notion that food should only be cheap and that there is little difference in food quality is IMO 
just plain ignorance. 

 I would also argue that the label is less important then what's in the jar for repeat business. 

The implication that someone who pays a high price for a jar of honey is getting ripped off is utter  
nonsense. If the label is misleading or contains false information then I can agree its 
misrepresented and the term rip off may apply. 

I do agree too that there is some average food posing as "fancy" food in a nice package. To 
dismiss all nicely packaged expensive food as a rip off though seems ill informed. I suppose the 
wine industry is a big rip off too?    

IMO some of the parameters of a high quality honey that a consumer can discern are:

age (honey loses some of its finest flavor qualities in the first 18 months)
location it was collected
moisture content
flavor,  (assuming it has any flavor: floral, citrus or earthen etc)
clarity
aroma (some not all exhibit this) 
texture (some honeys vary considerably)
color (some honey has an interesting or different color)

Producing honey, wine, cheese etc can be an art or a merely a task that is hurried through. The 
producer decides how he/she wants to run their business and charges accordingly.  

What I've seen is some folks just don't comprehend the many possibilities in the food world. They 
are most happy when they return from  the grocer with the most for the least$ and assume that is 
how the rest of the world shops....NOT. 

Millions of people around  the world shop for flavor, quality, ethics and other parameters and not 
all are fooled by the posers who try and offer average food in a fancy package. 

My advice to any beekeeper is to produce a high quality product, differentiate it from the mass 
produced version and sell it at whatever the local market will pay. 

I believe that this is the way to produce a more sustainable beekeeping industry and is more 
stable financially then the commercial route. Just look at European beekeepers to see how this can 
work, they have a lot more smal-medium sized producers who sell to the public. 

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